


lisdexamfetamine

by deepestfathoms



Category: The Prom (2020), The Prom - Sklar/Beguelin/Martin
Genre: ADHD!Emma, Author Has ADHD/ADD, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Misokinesia, Misophonia, emma is the bestest friend ever, meltdowns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29163879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepestfathoms/pseuds/deepestfathoms
Summary: It all started with an itch under her skin.
Relationships: Alyssa Greene/Emma Nolan
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	lisdexamfetamine

It all started with an itch under her skin.

Well, maybe it started with her losing focus in her classes. That had never happened before. Usually, she was nothing but attentive; that was what her Algebra II teacher said after noticing her slacking in note-taking and homework. She apologized, but could not give an explanation, for she didn’t know what was going on, either.

But there was an itch under her skin.

No--not an itch. A buzz. Like touching a bare bulb with wet hands. Winnie had done that once; her younger sister griped at her, calling her weird and “messed up”, but she still did it anyway, mainly because she didn’t hear. Her hands wrapped the bulb and she immediately yelped as the current rippled through her, twitching and biting and--

It was like that.

There was a buzz under her skin. A current.

It was making her heart beat too fast sometimes. It was making her leg shake and her fingers twist and her voice leave her throat too loud. It was making her words knot and tangle, it was making her cling, it was making her--

It was making Winnie too much.

She tried, she did, she tried, she tried. She tried so hard to modulate, to concentrate, to listen, to stop, to stop, to stop.

But there was something electric under her skin and now it hurt sometimes to sit and listen and focus. 

It just hurt.

It made something in her stomach twist and knot and ache. It made her head squeeze. It made her breath leave her lungs too quick.

She tried.

But sometimes things were too fast or too slow or too loud or too quiet. Sometimes things were too--

Sometimes there were details.

She was getting too lost in details, she knew she was, or sometimes she skipped over them completely, or--

Her head was like a camera, she thought, except that the camera only zoomed in way too close or zoomed out way too far and she couldn’t--

She couldn’t get to that middle setting.

She didn’t hate it the way she thought she probably should. The way she was sure other people did. She just--

This was how she was now.

And she didn’t hate it even if sometimes she got frustrated. She was getting frustrated a lot, really. She got frustrated when her body was exhausted and the buzz to movemovemove hadn’t gone away, or when she looked up and realized she’d lost half an hour messing with a plastic cup she didn’t even remember grabbing, or when her mouth was too slow for her head, or--

Or when she looked at Emma or Alyssa or Kaylee or Shelby or someone else and saw the subtle way their lips pressed together because- because it was the third time, fifth time, tenth time they’d said something, explained something, and they were patient at first, but sometimes--

Sometimes the words didn’t filter right. Sometimes the words twisted or tangled or hooked the wrong way or sounded strange and-- Winnie lost the thread.

She tried so hard.

There were the little things, too. The things that were so minuscule that they shouldn’t have bothered her, they shouldn’t have distracted her, but they  _ did. _

There were jeans and the way their abrasive fabric rubbed her legs until it felt like they were crawling with fire ants or covered in sticker burrs. She hated how tight they were on her thighs and pelvis, no matter what the size was, and often found herself squirming when she wore them. 

There were all the sounds around her. Someone tapping their foot or thumping their table in class, someone singing out loud on the bus, a repetitive beeping from somewhere down the hallway, loud chewing from the kid sitting next to her in fourth period, her baby brother screaming and crying bloody murder- and that wasn’t even the full list of the things that made her head feel like it was going to explode. All the noise just seemed to fill her brain with a storm that she couldn’t block out no matter how hard she tried or how high she turned her music up. It made her irrationally angry, too, and she couldn’t quite explain why. It just  _ did.  _ But she was never one to tell the source of the sound to shut up, oh no. Not her. Never her.

There were the texture of some foods, like soggy bread or bananas or soft vegetables or those squishy pieces of meat that would somehow crunch in her teeth whenever she took a bite. All of it made her want to pull her own tongue out. It made her shudder, it made her recoil, it made her gag, it made her instantly spit her food out, and that then made her get in trouble because people got confused and grossed out because they couldn’t understand.

There was the way it was hard to speak sometimes. How she didn’t have a stutter or a lisp, but her words would still trip over each other and slur together. How she said “um” way too often when trying to explain something. How her sentences sometimes came out like, “I’m just saying that if he- if he doesn’t- I’m just- saying that if he- he- uhh…  _ I’m just saying that if he doesn’t want _ -” and she would end up just giving up trying to explain in fear of annoying the people trying to discern her weird ramblings.

There was the way her hands wanted to touch things. All the things. Everything. But she felt embarrassed and childish for such a thing, like she was acting like a toddler for it. And she wanted to touch people, too, like Kaylee’s arm and Alyssa’s hand and Emma’s hair, but Kaylee once shoved her off when she tried, and it wasn’t meant to be mean, it wasn’t meant to hurt her feelings, and yet she hadn’t recovered from it. She knew people had boundaries, and she tried not to push them, but she wanted to touch so badly.

There was the way she sometimes didn’t process sounds properly. It was like her brain was buffering or something; she heard someone say something, but by the time they were repeating their sentence or question, she was already answering them. Or sometimes she would go “Huh?” several times in a row and it made people confused, annoyed, angry, because they think she wasn’t paying attention, and she was, but sometimes she just couldn’t process their words fast enough for their liking.

There was the short attention span and the way it was getting harder to focus on things that didn’t interest her. She knew her grades and work effort were starting to show this. Her parents didn’t take “it’s hard for me to focus because it doesn’t interest me” as an answer and would get mad at her.

There was the sudden anger. A lot of things made her angry. The noises, when she couldn’t do something the way she wanted to do it, when Emma denied her request to hang out to be with Alyssa, people pestering her when she was trying to do something, people disagreeing with her, people insulting something she liked,  _ people _ . It was always the little things that made her unfathomably angry and she couldn’t explain it, but it made her want to gouge their eyes out with her thumbs. It made her think deep, dark thoughts that she couldn’t bring herself to feel ashamed of.

There were the movements. Random movements, and she couldn’t explain why they bothered her so much but they  _ did.  _ Someone bouncing their knee or something rocking back and forth or someone waving their hands- she couldn’t stand it. She hated when anyone else did such a thing, but was perfectly fine when she herself did it, and that made her feel like a hypocrite.

There was the way she enjoyed picking her skin, which was a whole issue in and of itself.

There was the sensitivity to rejection. The way her mind jumped to conclusions over the smallest things. Kaylee looked in her direction, but didn’t make eye contact, so she must have hated her. Alyssa said she would pick her up at 5:30, but it was 5:33, so she tricked Winnie and left her stranded with the thought that she actually wanted her around. Emma decided to go out with Alyssa instead of her, so she didn’t like her anymore. It all made her feel so bad.

But it was not this buzz she hated.

She hated herself.

She hated her brain and body for creating this new current that seared beneath her skin. It was ruining her, she knew it. It made her broken and she didn’t know how to deal with it.

It was impossible. Impossible to ignore it all, impossible to block it all out, impossible to disagree with the things it made her think about.

And she couldn’t take it, couldn’t take it, couldn’t take it--

Everything became too much. Winnie was too overwhelmed. She felt like she was drowning, suffocating, burning.

She felt like she was  _ dying _ . Constantly. Over and over again, she was dying.

Still. She did what she always did: she dealt with it silently, never letting anyone know she was distressed, never making it seem like she needed help in fear of annoying others.

Until she couldn’t, of course.

The day in particular hadn’t been a good one to begin with. Winnie had woken up that morning to her young brother flicking her light on and off while his twin sister screeched in a shrill voice that she was late and “Mama and Dada were mad.” And then there was the constant clattering in the kitchen and the way her mother said she wasn’t going to drive her to school because she “made the decision to be lazy and not get up on time” so she had to ride the bus. But on the bus, she had to sit with another kid who didn’t move their backpack over so she had to perch on the edge and was constantly almost thrown off. And there was the seat belt digging into the back of her neck from her uncomfortable position and the heat inside the bus even though it was autumn and the girl singing along to the radio even though her voice was horrible.

School wasn’t any better. All the racist, homophobic white boys were extra loud in her first period Algebra II class, making her ears feel like they were bleeding. Then her hair kept getting into her eyes and made her want to rip it all off. Then she didn’t get to present her writing in Journalism and almost cried over it.

Noises from inside the school were all encompassing, rattling Winnie’s skull, eardrums threatening to burst. When she finally found a semi-quiet place to rest, a small storage room down by the auditorium, she squeezed her eyes closed, covered her ears, rocked frantically with her head bent to her knees in an effort to block it all out. But no matter what she did, she couldn’t, and that was it.

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she let out a loud, pained, keening noise as she cracked her head back against the wall behind her, dug it in firmly when she sank to the floor. She clawed at her shirt like fire was consuming her, desperately trying to get it off but it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t. The material tore, eventually, but it didn’t help.

Fuck.

Her head shook hard, side to side, side to side, repeat. She swore she could feel her brain trying to detach and fly out her nose. Her hands snapped to her scalp, pulling harshly on her hair and  _ god fucking dammit _ , it still wasn’t enough. Her fingers left her hair with one last tug, loose strands of red stuck between them, and balled into tight fists to strike down on the sides of her head. She pushed her feet firmly into the floor, thrashed and squirmed in the corner.

_ Nothing was enough nothing was enough why was this happening nothing was enough _

She slammed her feet down harder, dug the heels into the floor until her thighs ached. Her hands found her hair again and she grabbed on, this time not tugging but holding the red locks in a death grip and staying there, hunched over, head bent to her knees, made keening-moaning sounds like a whale having some sort of episode.

She stayed like this, rocking and writhing and pulling her hair with tears rolling down her cheeks, for what felt like forever. All she knew was she could still feel it- the lingering, bone-deep pain of the noises, eyes sore like she’d looked at the sun too long, skin burning and tingling from unseen fire.

That was when Emma rushed in. Winnie didn’t know how she found her. Perhaps she was making more noise than she had realized in her attempt to block everything out.

Winnie didn’t register Emma as Emma. She didn’t even register her as a human being, just a presence she felt nearby. The touch she began to feel on her body, however, made her whimper in fright. First on her stomach, grazing lightly over scratches she knew she had carved in the flesh, then her head, where strands of hair had been pulled out, finally her shoulder, over more angry red claw marks. The hand was gentle with each prod, which was the only reason why Winnie didn’t scream. She even relaxed into it a few times, almost cooing through her painful sobs.

“Emma--” Winnie gasped out. 

“It’s okay, Winnie,” Emma assured her softly. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

“Something is wrong--” Winnie choked. “Something is wrong, Emma, something is  _ wrong _ \--”

Emma frowned. She looked worried.

“Can I touch you?” Emma asked.

Winnie nodded shakily. She liked that she got a choice. Nobody ever gave her a choice.

Emma put one hand on her knee and the other on her wrist. Winnie jolted a little, but Emma’s touch was like cold water against the fire in her skin. She craved it.

“Emma,” Winnie sobbed. “I-I d-don’t know wh-what’s happening to me. Make it stop!”

Emma sat down in front of her. “I’m here, Winnie,” She said. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here to help. What can I do?”

“I-I don’t-- I don’t know,” Winnie said. “This-- this has never--”

“This has never happened before?” Emma finished for her, and Winnie nodded. “I see.”

Winnie squirmed again. She remembered Emma’s hand on her wrist and, as fast as a bullwhip, grabbed it and held it to her cheek. Emma’s skin against her own was soothing in ways she couldn’t put into words.

“D-don’t leave,” Winnie said. “Please.”

“I won’t, I promise,” Emma said.

And she didn’t.

* * *

She didn’t.

She said nothing. She listened to the girl’s gasping breaths and knew that it was nothing that words could cure- not anymore. Not after years of having no one, of being stabbed in the back and spoon fed lies. She closed her eyes and immersed herself in the tapping of shoes against the tile in the hallway, the distant calls of students, the persistent hum of the AC.

She wondered what Winnie used to ground herself.

She wondered if she grounded herself at all.

Emma knew better than anyone what it was like to lose control. When she was young, she used to have meltdowns all the time. If her pants were too scratchy or her kindergarten class was too noisy or her dinner didn’t feel right inside her mouth, it all fell apart for her. She would have what her parents would call a “Pompeii-level of explosive temper tantrum”, but her grandma said it was normal. Still, it drove her parents up the wall, especially when it was over stupid things. It was worse for Emma because she didn’t know how to control herself or stop the way she was feeling. It just--happened.

As she got older, it became easier to manage herself. Ever since she moved in with her grandma, she had yet to have a meltdown. But still. It was scary, becoming a passenger in your own body. 

Slowly, softly, Winnie was calming down to some degree. Her face was still pale white and she was still crying, but her eyes looked slightly less blown out of focus. She shifted, wiggling her shoes beneath Emma’s thigh. Emma didn’t shift. She wouldn’t leave until she did.

“It’s okay,” Emma finally whispered. “I’m here. I’m not leaving you.”

Winnie whimpered. “What?”

“Because I care about you.” Emma went on. “Fuck what everyone else thinks. I respect you and if nobody else does, I’ll break their knees.” SHe puffed out her chest for emphasis, hoping to make her laugh or smile or at least stop crying, but Winnie just whimpered again. She raised her head to look at Emma, body quaking, eyes flashing with tears. 

“Why?” She said again, sniffling miserably.

“We’re friends.” Emma told her. “You know that, don’t you?” The look she got said that she didn’t believe it. “Come on. Tell me some things you know about me. You’d be surprised about how well you know me. It’ll help ground you, too. Just focus on my voice and things about me. Nothing else. Nothing else is here. You and me- we’re the only things that exist right now.”

Winnie hesitated, then began to speak, sniffling and hiccuping in between breaths, “Your name is Emma Nolan.” She winced at how bland it was, but Emma only nodded, brushing a bit of her brown hair out of her eyes. Winnie’s face scrunched up like she was conjuring her mental notes in front of her, struggling to bring that gridded mess of numbers and words to mind. 

“You’re only slightly shorter than Alyssa,” She continued. Somewhere outside the closet, outside their little world, someone was shouting for a “Jared”, calling for him to “hurry his ass up.” Winnie flinched at the yelling, despite how distant it was, and Emma pressed the hand on her cheek closer, silently assuring her that she was there.

“That’s right,” Emma said. She knew her role here was only background noise. That was her job, whether Winnie knew it or not, and she was more than happy to fulfill it. She didn’t mind being subject to the scrutiny of stopping some “redheaded spaz” from having a “psychotic episode in the closet” because of it. Not if it’s what she needed to feel better.

“Your eyes are, like, a really pretty hazel color. They got specks of green and gold in it, so they’re not just normal, boring brown.”

Emma snorted. “Damn, honey. Whatchu got against brown eyes?”

“Mmmm,” Winnie squished her cheek against Emma’s hand. “Not pretty…”

Emma laughed. “Alright, fair enough. Keep going. You’re doing so good.”

“You always have that jacket with the patches on it on. Sometimes you don’t brush your hair in the morning, so you just go to school with it messy. Your sneakers were white, once upon a time.” She managed to tease her, uttering out a tiny giggle.

“What can I say, darling, I’m a filthy gremlin, like all true lesbians are--” She joked, and Winnie swatted her lightly poked her with an arm. Winnie bit back a laugh, and Emma wished that she wouldn’t- Winnie tipped her head back when she laughed, unabashed and on the edge of hysterical, giggling and snorting, shoulders shaking with mirth until she brought her gaze back down again, cheeks flushed from the exertion of being host to that much joy despite everything that she’d been through. No one held the weight of neglect and mistreatment as heavily on their shoulders as Winnie Thompson did- Winnie, the library to all of those scattered instances of would-be’s-could-be’s-shouldn’t-be’s. And still, there was a smidge of joy. It was beautiful. Emma thought that she was most beautiful when she was laughing (don’t tell Alyssa, and if you did, make sure you let her know it was completely platonic. but just don’t tell her at all).

“You have, like, this favorite yellow shirt and it just says ‘lamp’ in big black letters. And Alyssa thinks it’s hideous.” Winnie continued. She was tapping her foot against Emma’s leg, a gentle soothing gesture, and Emma let her. Emma knew that it was more for herself than her. 

Winnie’s eyes then darted away sheepishly. Her breathing was slowly evening out. “S-so I, umm…” She shifted. “So I got a black shirt that just says ‘moth’ in big yellow letters t-to, umm, match…”

Emma gasped. “Aww! Winnie! That’s so cute!”

Winnie blushed, ducking her head. She was aware enough to be flustered about Emma’s gushing. That was a good sign.

“Sometimes you think about getting contacts,” Winnie went on. “Because you think your glasses make you look silly. But I like them.” Pause, and when she spoke again, it wasn’t about the glasses anymore. “It’s sorta like having an older sibling.” Pause. Winnie looked up at her with glittering eyes. “You’re Emma Nolan.”

The weight that she placed on her name made Emma’s heart stutter, catching in her chest- the warmth that she felt towards Winnie was almost unbearable, and she found herself grinning, mouth gone crooked in the gesture.

“I’m Emma Nolan, that’s right,” She repeated to her, as if they’re introducing themselves at some shitty college icebreaker. “And I’m not going anywhere, Winnie.” She went on, a touch of urgency in her voice- and Winnie smiled weakly, eyes closing, though hers are more reserved than her own, somehow. There was a tear bright in the corner of her right eye, and it traced a thin path down her face. More come. They pooled at her chin, dripping off of her face, and splattered against the cold tile ground. Emma’s chest ached.

“And you’re not going anywhere,” She whispered, voice hitching a little halfway through. Emma swiped a thumb over her cheek with her free hand, flicked the tear off into the wall behind them. Then, she cupped Winnie’s face with both hands, holding her together, and Winnie pressed into her touch hungrily, starved of attention and affection.

“I’m not,” Emma promised. “I’m not leaving you, Winnie.” And her voice had gone soft, her name cradled gently in her mouth, like she was afraid of breaking something precious.


End file.
